FEBRUARY 2017 VISA BULLETIN: ANALYSIS

The Department of State has just issued the February 2017 Visa Bulletin. This is the fifth Visa Bulletin of Fiscal Year 2017. This blog post analyzes this month's Visa Bulletin.

February 2017 Visa Bulletin

Final Action Dates

Applications with these dates may be approved for their Green Card (Permanent Residency card).

Employ-
ment
based

All Charge-
ability
Areas Except
Those Listed

CHINA-
mainland
born

INDIA

MEXICO

PHILIPPINES

1st

C

C

C

C

C

2nd

C

15NOV12

15APR08

C

C

3rd

01OCT16

01OCT13

22MAR05

01OCT16

15OCT11

MU Law Analysis

All Other: The EB-2 has been current for many years. The EB-3 progression continues. Consular processed EB-3 are effectively current.

China: The China EB-2 date moved up one month. The China EB-3 date also progressed about one month. The China EB-3 continues to have a more favorable date than EB-2, as a result of many Chinese EB-3 workers "upgrading" their applications to EB-2.

Philippines: EB-3 moved ahead by another three months. The Philippine EB-3 number essentially cleaned out all 2010 EB-3 visas and much of the 2011 EB-2 visas in just five months. This is what we have expected. (Our note from September 2016: "This is consistent with internal MU Law analysis which sees this category progressing into 2013 by the Summer of 2017.").